Federalism is a constitutionalized version of multi-tier governance. Proponents of veto-player theory argue that a high number of veto players leads to a high degree of policy stability. Compared to states with a unitary structure, federal countries, in which at least one sub-central level of...

This paper does three things. First, based on a limited number of theoretically established dimensions, it proposes a new de facto indicator for the rule of law. It is the first such indicator to take the quality of legal norms explicitly into account. Second, using this indicator we shed new...

Based on data from the EU Justice Scoreboard, we identify a puzzle: National levels of judicial independence (as perceived by the citizens of EU member states) are negatively associated with the presence of formal legislation usually considered as conducive to judicial independence. We try to...

Constitutional democracy is in decline and many would-be autocrats try to elude constitutional constraints or even to exploit constitutions in their favor. We make a number of proposals for designing constitutions that are more resilient against such attempts. A first look at the empirical...

Prosecutors are immensely influential in every judicial system, yet very little is known about the impact of their organization. Here we ask two questions: (1) whether crimes committed by public officials are more likely to be prosecuted when prosecutors are independent, and (2) whether this...

This article introduces a novel database that measures governments' compliance with national constitutions. It combines information on de jure constitutional rules with data on their de facto implementation. The individual compliance indicators can be grouped into four categories that we...

Over the last couple of decades, non-majoritarian institutions (NMIs) have been introduced in many countries. Of late, they have been criticized as promoting technocracy to the detriment of democracy. A number of political scientists even argue that they would strengthen populists and be, hence,...

In many modern nation states, both rich and poor, traditional law to this day plays an important role. Given the almost universal prevalence of traditional law, it is surprising how little we know about it. This is the first study that tries to take stock of traditional law from a cross-country...

Many years ago, Emmanuel Todd argued that differences in family organization - specifically the rules of inheritance, the number of generations living under one roof, and endogamous marriage - are reflected in the organization of the state. He also argued that different family types lead to...

This paper shows that courts are not only a crucial part of the rule of law in the conventional sense but that they can also serve an important function in revealing information regarding the performance of lower level governments to the central government, and thereby improve their performance....